Some Things Never Change
by Schattenfalke
Summary: Daniel is a kind but inexperienced young man. Alicia is a friendly but childish young woman. They were dating but they broke up before college. Unfortunately, they cross paths as rival group members. Friendship is hard
1. Prologue

_Hand in hand_ _, chest to chest and now we're face to face..._

"How on earth do you get your voice to go that low? That's awesome!" whispered Alicia over to her right.

"It obviously has to do with an amount of training and skill" replied Daniel, slightly yelling to be heard over the roar of screaming teenage girls in the first 10 rows of the theater. "that and post-puberty vocal chords"

"Eww, that's nasty" said Alicia, "Why would you even mention that?"

"It's not my fault you're so squeamish" Daniel shot.

Daniel and Alicia were grade 8 lovers who somehow stuck together for five years of each other, with almost zero signs of slowing down. It was the the final day of high school for the both of them, aswell as their three mutual best friends, whom Daniel decided would enjoy seeing an acapella performance just as much as him and his girlfriend would. As soon as he heard about the competitive world of acapella he arranged for them all to get tickets to see the ICCA finals. He explained to Alicia how busy everyone was going to be over the summer and that this would be the best way to say goodbye. She was totally on board. Though she was mostly excited to see the two groups representing the college she would be attending.

All five of the grade twelve graduates whooped and hollered as the "Treblemakers-" as the announcer referred to them- hustled off the stage. They all took a second to glance at each other, checking to see if anyone of themselves wasn't sharing the same look of amazement as the others. After confirming they'd all had a similar experience, they looked back onto the stage just in time to see the next group - the Barden Bellas - hustling onto the stage as fast as they could in there 3-inch high heels and tight skirts, a clear negative side effect of dressing up as flight attendants to go along with singing and dancing. Daniel looks over at his friend Lincoln just as he sends a wink Daniels way, then whistles as loudly as possible between two fingers. Daniel rolls his eyes and gives an "I don't know him" kind of a face. A funny sounding tone buzzes from the singer at the front of the group and then the groups starts singing. It bugs Daniel a little bit that the leader of the bellas has a funny sounding voice that tends to go hand in hand with trying too hard to be heard. Thankfully the microphone gets handed off to a cute blonde fairly quickly and redeems their skill. That is until the pressure gets to the blonde and she releases it all over the crowd in front of her.

"Well that turned out fun!" Alicia said "at least it was before that poor girl got a bit excited"

"yeah," Daniel agreed "When you show up to Barden you should offer condolences from all five of us if you see her. I can't imagine how she must feel."

"Wait, you're going to Barden?" Lincoln asked Alicia, starting to smile a little "so am I! Along with my next door neighbour, Stacie."

The two other friends, Jacob and Charles, started joining in.

"I'm going to some place in Detroit, I heard that they have a pretty good acapella group there who would've made it to the finals if it weren't for some injury," Jacob said.

"I'm working to get into Harvard." Charles muttered.

"Yeah right!" Everyone laughed.

"Oh shut up!" Charles replied jokingly, understanding how everyone felt about his interest in school. He turned around to spit out his gum right before asking "What about you?" as he gestured to Daniel "Where are you going?"

"I don't know yet," he replied "I didn't work towards any scholarships, so my decision is mostly based on money"

"Well Barden is one of the cheapest choices, which is partly why I chose it." Alicia pointed out "That would work out great too! No one likes long distance relationships" Alicia reached over to grab Daniel's hand, which he countered with his playful twiddling, an act he commonly did to bug Alicia. Their relationship worked mostly around bugging each other constantly and playing around the same way you would see in a pair of best friends: trying to annoy the hell out of each other. They both treated each other with their highest amount of affection though still accepting that they weren't exactly stuck together. One time Daniel had asked Alicia directly if she still felt the same as when they started going out, to which Alicia indirectly replied "I feel great." Daniel very well knew that Alicia avoided the question as easily as she could, but he felt no need to further push the interrogation. Alicia had never made him feel otherwise about their relationship. Daniel simply, being the gentleman he was, wanted to ensure that Alicia was as happy as Daniel was.

"Anyways, it's a bit late. My brother's going to want me to see him before he goes to bed. Four year old priorities, huh?" Lincoln said. Lincoln treated his brother like the most important person in his life. Daniel occasionally joked that since Lincoln didn't have a girlfriend, he needed to put his love somewhere (to which Lincoln oftened violently responded, he had slight anger issues.)

Everyone gave him a hug and said good night before he started running to the parking lot to grab his car. Of their little friend group, he was the only one with a fully fledged liscence to drive. He also took immense joy in the fact that he managed to find a '71 Dodge Charger with only around 150 000 kilometers on it, quite a successful find considering the age of the thing. He wasn't taking any classes or extra-curriculars to do with cars, but right next to singing, vehicles were his passion. If it had four wheels or metal wings he loved it.

"Alright guys, Lincoln's right, It's late. I'm gonna go home" Alicia said.

"I'll walk you home." Daniel quickly volunteered.

"You don't have to do that." Alicia equally as quickly blurted. "Can I talk to you for a second, Daniel?" Drawing an eyebrow up north on Jacob's face. Jacob fancied himself some kind of relationship aid. He figured he would just explain his theory tomorrow via phonecall. As he and Charles turned to walk away (they lived on the same street) Charles turned backwards to walk without the wind in his face, immediately stopping and tapping Jacob's elbow, pointing back towards Daniel and Alicia.

"FINALLY" Jacob called out, interrupting the very experimental teenagery make out session that the couple was so invested in. Charles gave a catcall whistle at them. Alicia blushing and Daniel making a scene out of it by gripping Alicia's thin hips. Daniel immidiately went back in for a gentle kiss when Alicia, potentially getting back at him for his earlier joke about holding hands, put a box of tic-tacs in between their two mouths. Daniel had watched Alicia hand as it drifted to her purse and under the zipper had been a very suspicious shape. Daniel turned around to block out Jacob and Charles' view before reaching in and pulling out the evidently used pregnancy test, displaying two lines.

"What the frick?" Daniel whispered.

"You should know better than to go rummaging through someone's purse, dick!" Alicia spat back.

" I'll come back to that later, this is far more important! We've never had-..."

"It's not yours!" Alicia interupted, breaking up into tears.

"oh, hell." Daniel turned around, wiping his hands down his face. "Then who? Who did you get so excited over that you had to trample him over in bed?"

"Give me a break! It was an accident, he... sort of... pressured me into it."

"Who is 'he'?"

"I don't want to talk about it. It's none of your business."

"None of my business?! When did this happen?"

"I used the test a month ago." Alicia said clearly weakening due to her own "guilt"

"So you've been confirmed pregnant at 16 years old for a month and you didn't even want to tell me? And you think it's none of my business?" Daniel screamed, deliriously angry. While all this was going on, Jacob and Charles awkwardly and sadly huddled off to the side, but as they heard the tempers and voices rising they knew they were going to have to get involved.

"Alright Daniel! Calm down, public place!" Jacob called while him and Charles ran over to pull Daniel away.

"Thank god I'm driving." whispered Jacob to Charles, while ignoring Daniel's roars. Daniel wasn't ever heavy -only somewhere around 100 lbs.- so it wasn't hard to carry him to the parking lot, but it still hurt them to know that this event was going to interupt their friend group. It sucked even more to know that this was the best way they could to try and keep it intact.

"You better believe this is over!" Daniel roared finally, before being thrown in the back seat of a Dodge Dakota pick-up.


	2. The Beginning

Author's note: I apologize for the lack of direct references to Pitch Perfect and any of it's content. I simply wanted to give some backstory to the main characters that we will be following.

Daniel was enjoying his free time at the street corner. As odd of a concept as it is, Daniel found it relaxing to wait for a taxi. Plus, it gave him an opportunity to listen to his music. He was an experienced trombone player and he was hoping to improve his skills to a professional level within the next four years. He picked up two classes: sound production -basically how use a soundboard to the best of its potential- and a conducting/composing and arranging class. That being said, trombone was still his favourite instrument and so he was listening to the best trombonist of all time: Christopher Bill. From trombone to conducting orchestra to singing/beatboxing, he was opening quite an amount doors for himself; He couldn't have been prouder. Granted, he had higher hopes for a school. Unfortunately, like he had predicted, it all came down to money, and Barden was the cheapest around.

As a cab pulled up to his corner, Daniel pulled his earbuds out. He reflected: weighing out what was about to happen. In about a ten minute drive, he was going to step foot on campus grounds and commence a four year long popularity contest. Realistically, everyone knew that college was a win or lose situation. You either had what it took, or you didn't. Educationally, Daniel had it in the bag. Socially, he was getting worried.

He put his earbuds back in and stepped out of the taxi. He went around back to grab his bag, declining the man with a cart to carry it. He continued picturing himself, thinking of his social positives and negatives: He was short, EXTREMELY short. It had taken him until grade 11 to reach 5 foot. But he figured standing at 5'3" wouldn't hurt his reputation _that_ much. He had blond hair, with an amazing flow, something that girls had gone crazy for throughout highschool. His clothing style was questionable, most often looking like a tourist trapped in hawaii: flowery shirts, boardshorts and no-lace vans with palm leave decals quite often paired with ankle high socks. He was proud of his body, he never went on a strong workout routine. He only ever did enough crunches and pushups to get an eight-pack so that guys wouldn't make fun of him in the changeroom for gym class.

Atleast he would have a friend going into college (Lincoln, it would be a long time before him and Alicia would even want to think about each other again) and he'd yet to meet his new roommate: Kolio.

As he was entering through the gates to barden he immediately noticed how populated it was, and how clique-y it was. There was a group of guys in lawn chairs with signs that listed numbers 1-10, which they flashed at girls as they walked by. There was also a VERY large amount of booths/stands advertising student-run organizations. He quickly picked out a few: swim-team, baseball, soccer, trivia; He found a couple of groups that he was positive he wouldn't be joining: Quidditch, knitting, some weird video-game group, etc. After a little bit of browsing from his one spot he took his suitcase and started heading down the path. As soon as he turned around he was face to face with a woman with curly black hair and a lot of freckles.

"Hello there! I'm a Barden University guide! What dorm?" She asked extremely cheerfully.

"Andersen, I believe." Daniel replied.

"Okay, you got the hard one. You have to take a left after those birch trees there, then behind Baker hall, there's a hedge around the gate."

"Okay, thank y-..." Daniel began, before being immediately interuppted.

"You're likely to get lost, so you'll need this," she said, hand Daniel a folded map labeled Barden University. "and don't forget, no one wants their lives ruined in the middle of their education, please practice safe sex!" she said, taking the conversation way further than Daniel expected, as she handed him a box of condoms.

Daniel quickly mumbled a thanks and hustled past the woman, avoiding eye contact. When he found Baker hall he walked around it and found the hedge that the lady had been talking about. He walked to the gate and saw a very clean, well taken-care-of building. Compared to the other buildings this one looked brand new. "I'm gonna like it here." Daniel whispered to himself, while also being unable to withold a chuckle. He walked through the gates up to the dorm entrance.


End file.
